Motivation

Everyone knows someone like this: They are that annoying friend who always seems to be motivated. You wake up feeling crappy and decide to take the day off. They cheerfully go to the gym at 5 AM every day, no matter if they were up until 1 AM the night before. You break down and eat an entire box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts. They seem to subsist on a lettuce leaf and a sliver of carrot, and enjoy it. Bottom line, despite the fact that they are your friend, you hate them. You also want to be like them and wonder what their secret is.

I have been both of those people throughout my life. I was the obese, donut eating couch potato. I am now a standard-bearer for diet and exercise. The difference between the two is motivation. When I was 350 lbs, I spent much of the day wondering what it was like to be thin, and wishing that I could make the changes necessary to lose weight. I felt stupid and embarrassed because I lacked the "willpower" to make changes. I also felt ashamed because I am a doctor, and should have known better then to get myself into such a mess.

I was committing a classic mistake. I was confusing desire with motivation. Most of us have desire. We want to be richer, better looking, happier, thinner, or healthier. We want these things, and assume that since we want them, the desire should be sufficient. It is not. Desire without motivation is not strong enough to force a change. Take alcoholics and people addicted to drugs. I see many people in these situations on a daily basis in the Emergency Department. Whenever I ask them if they want to stop, they say yes. In fact, many of them present to the ED with the chief complaint of "I want to detox from alcohol/ drugs." Sadly, 80-90% of these people will fail in their quest. Most people who successfully stop alcohol or drug abuse first have to hit rock bottom.

Why does hitting bottom make success more likely? It adds motivation to their desire. Instead of some abstract concept of being drug free trying to compete with the very real pleasure offered by the drugs or alcohol, the person is faced with extremely negative emotions due to very bad consequences in their life. These negative emotions are strong enough in many cases to enable permanent change.

You don't have to be a drug addict, or hit bottom to use this idea in your own life. The key is the emotion. We spend a lot of time and energy trying to avoid our negative emotions, because they are uncomfortable. It is hard to look at ourselves and see the flaws. It is much easier to lie to ourselves and minimize our flaws. This is unfortunate, as our negative emotions can actually be our best friends. The key is to view them for what they are: tools. Emotions are tools used by our brains to make us do things. It is not a coincidence that the word "emotion" contains the word "motion." Practically everything we do starts with an emotion. Emotion produces thought, which produces action.

This means to motivate yourself to change, you just have to attach negative enough emotions to the way things are that changing is the more palatable alternative. For me, the negative emotions came from the fact that I might not get to see my children grow up due to my poor health. The shame and sadness that this scenario brought to me was enough to get me started on the path to weight loss. Now, that shame and fear of going back to the way I used to be keep me motivated. If you want to have such motivation in your life, then you need to find your reason. In order to say no to the pleasurable foods, pervasive advertisements, and easy sedentary lifestyles which are so common in our society, you must have a bigger yes inside of you. The negative emotions will clue in to what you want most, and provide the yes that you need to move from desire to motivation.